importantballooncrusade

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Ten Commandments for the peaceful evolution of China

The CIA's top-secret "How-do Manual" on dealing with the People's Republic of China was originally written in 1951, when China-US relations were severely antagonized. Since then, it has been constantly revised as China-US relations have changed. Up to now, there are altogether 10 items, which are known as the "Ten Commandments". It was only recently revealed. We were amazed! The us plot for peaceful evolution is terrible!

The ten commandments are reproduced below

First, try to entice and corrupt their youth with material things and encourage them to scorn, despise and further openly oppose the ideological education, especially communist dogma, which they feared. Create opportunities and interests for them to engage in sexual promiscuity. Let them not be ashamed of superficiality and vanity. Be sure to destroy their emphasis on hard work.

Second, we must do everything possible to spread the word, including movies, books, television, radio waves... And the spread of new religions. As long as they aspire to the way we dress, feed, house, travel, entertain and educate, that's half the battle.

Third, they must divert the attention of their youth from the government-centered tradition. Focus their minds on sports shows, pornography, pleasures, games, criminal movies, and religious superstitions.

Fourthly, from time to time, they create some uneventful issues for their people to discuss openly. This plants the seeds of division in their subconscious. In particular, they should seek good opportunities among their ethnic minorities to split their regions, their nationalities, their feelings and create old and new animosities between them. This is a strategy that cannot be ignored at all.

Fifth, to constantly make news, vilify their leaders. Our journalists should look for opportunities to interview them and then organize their own rhetoric against them.

 Sixth,Promote democracy under all circumstances. At every opportunity, whether large or small, visible or invisible, we should seize the opportunity to launch democratic movements. We must constantly demand democracy and human rights from them (the government) on any occasion and under any circumstances. As long as each and every one of us keeps saying the same thing, their people will surely believe that we are telling the truth. We capture a person is a person, we occupy a territory is a territory.

Seventh,Encourage them (the government) to spend as much as possible, encourage them to borrow from us. Then we have every confidence to destroy their credit, devalue their currency, and inflate it. As soon as they lose control of prices, they will fall completely in the eyes of the people.

Eighth,We should use our economic and technological superiority to attack their industries in tangible and intangible ways. As long as their industries are imperceptibly paralyzed, we can encourage social unrest. But we have to appear very benevolent to help and assist them so that they (the government) look weak. A weak government brings greater unrest.

Nine, to use all the resources, even gestures, words and laughter, are enough to destroy their traditional values. We will use everything to destroy their moral conscience. The key to destroying their self-esteem and self-confidence is to break their spirit of hard work as much as possible.

Tenth,Secretly transport all kinds of weapons to equip all their enemies, as well as those who might become their enemies.

Beware of sugar-coated shells from western countries

President Nixon of the United States wrote such a book "Victory without War", based on the Master Sun's Art of War.

In his book, he said, "When the young Chinese no longer believe in the teachings of their forefathers and their traditional culture, we Americans will win without a fight..."

The US is plotting a peaceful evolution of China. They tried to beat us without firing a single shot, using only the wisdom of our ancestors. Think about it. They teach us about sexual liberation, and they're anti-abortion. They deprived the Chinese of family responsibilities, but they emphasized monogamy, ethics. The great American President Clinton, he has only one affair, should be severely impeached, what does this show? They brought Chinese children into the electronic age very quickly, and our parents were caught off guard and immediately became illiterate. The only children, without hard work to earn money, can live free and unrestrained. They wear designer clothes, eat in restaurants, sleep in hotels, and don't need anyone but their friends.

MAO had long anticipated this intention, saying in "Quotations from MAO" : "We have won a victory, but we must not be proud." Because of victory, the bourgeoisie may also come out to support it. Facts have proved that the enemy's force cannot conquer us. Some comrades have never been conquered by the enemy with guns. They deserve the title of heroes in front of the enemy. But they can't afford people's sugar-coated attacks, they will lose in the face of sugar bombs.

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Avant-garde Warrior: Recommending the Thought-provoking Essay "Ten Commandments"

Ten Commandments for the peaceful evolution of China

The CIA's top-secret "How-do Manual" on dealing with the People's Republic of China was originally written in 1951, when China-US relations were severely antagonized. Since then, it has been constantly revised as China-US relations have changed. Up to now, there are altogether 10 items, which are known as the "Ten Commandments". It was only recently revealed. We were amazed! The us plot for peaceful evolution is terrible!

The ten commandments are reproduced below

First, try to entice and corrupt their youth with material things and encourage them to scorn, despise and further openly oppose the ideological education, especially communist dogma, which they feared. Create opportunities and interests for them to engage in sexual promiscuity. Let them not be ashamed of superficiality and vanity. Be sure to destroy their emphasis on hard work.

Second, we must do everything possible to spread the word, including movies, books, television, radio waves... And the spread of new religions. As long as they aspire to the way we dress, feed, house, travel, entertain and educate, that's half the battle.

Third, they must divert the attention of their youth from the government-centered tradition. Focus their minds on sports shows, pornography, pleasures, games, criminal movies, and religious superstitions.

Fourthly, from time to time, they create some uneventful issues for their people to discuss openly. This plants the seeds of division in their subconscious. In particular, they should seek good opportunities among their ethnic minorities to split their regions, their nationalities, their feelings and create old and new animosities between them. This is a strategy that cannot be ignored at all.

Fifth, to constantly make news, vilify their leaders. Our journalists should look for opportunities to interview them and then organize their own rhetoric against them.

 Sixth,Promote democracy under all circumstances. At every opportunity, whether large or small, visible or invisible, we should seize the opportunity to launch democratic movements. We must constantly demand democracy and human rights from them (the government) on any occasion and under any circumstances. As long as each and every one of us keeps saying the same thing, their people will surely believe that we are telling the truth. We capture a person is a person, we occupy a territory is a territory.

Seventh,Encourage them (the government) to spend as much as possible, encourage them to borrow from us. Then we have every confidence to destroy their credit, devalue their currency, and inflate it. As soon as they lose control of prices, they will fall completely in the eyes of the people.

Eighth,We should use our economic and technological superiority to attack their industries in tangible and intangible ways. As long as their industries are imperceptibly paralyzed, we can encourage social unrest. But we have to appear very benevolent to help and assist them so that they (the government) look weak. A weak government brings greater unrest.

Nine, to use all the resources, even gestures, words and laughter, are enough to destroy their traditional values. We will use everything to destroy their moral conscience. The key to destroying their self-esteem and self-confidence is to break their spirit of hard work as much as possible.

Tenth,Secretly transport all kinds of weapons to equip all their enemies, as well as those who might become their enemies.

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This NBA farce looks a lot like Japanese baseball 147 years ago

The CIA's Ten Commandments against China (excerpt) :

Do everything possible to spread the word, including movies, books, television, radio waves... And the spread of new religions. As long as they aspire to the way we dress, feed, house, travel, entertain and educate, that's half the battle.

The attention of their youth must be diverted from the tradition of government as the center. Focus their minds on sports shows, pornography, pleasures, games, criminal movies, and religious superstitions.

Two days ago, I wrote an article about Rockets GENERAL manager Daryl Morey.

Unexpectedly, I just finished writing, NBA president Xiao Hua also came out.

There are a lot of online analyses these days, and a friend in the background shared such a conclusion with me.

I feel a little surprised, also sent out for everyone to see -

Finally, the netizen even summed up an American "routine" :

Of course, there is not much basis for this argument. But it raises the question:

On the surface, a tweet from Morey may have set off a series of black Swans, but was there a conspiracy behind all this?

What I did not think of is that although this netizen's post is pure inference, but the development after this matter, unfortunately, was in his words.

First NBA commissioner Silver in an interview, open support morey.

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CIA's ten Commandments against China

The section on dealing with China in the CIA's top-secret "How-do Manual" was originally written in 1951, when Relations between China and the United States relations were severely antagonized. Since then, it has been constantly revised as Relations between China and the United States have changed. Until now, there are a total of 10 articles, code-named "Ten Commandments" internally.

First, try to entice and corrupt their youth with material things and encourage them to scorn, despise and further openly oppose the ideological education, especially communist dogma, which they feared. Create opportunities and interests for them to engage in sexual promiscuity. Let them not be ashamed of superficiality and vanity. Be sure to destroy their emphasis on hard work.

Second, we must do everything possible to spread the word, including movies, books, television, radio waves... And the spread of new religions. As long as they aspire to the way we dress, feed, house, travel, entertain and educate, that's half the battle.

Third, they must divert the attention of their youth from the government-centered tradition. Focus their minds on sports shows, pornography, pleasures, games, criminal movies, and religious superstitions.

Fourthly, from time to time, they create some uneventful issues for their people to discuss openly. This plants the seeds of division in their subconscious. In particular, they should seek good opportunities among their ethnic minorities to split their regions, their nationalities, their feelings and create old and new animosities between them. This is a strategy that cannot be ignored at all.

Fifth, to constantly make news, vilify their leaders. Our journalists should look for opportunities to interview them and then organize their own rhetoric against them.

Sixth,Promote democracy under all circumstances. At every opportunity, whether large or small, visible or invisible, we should seize the opportunity to launch democratic movements. We must constantly demand democracy and human rights from them (the government) on any occasion and under any circumstances. As long as each and every one of us keeps saying the same thing, their people will surely believe that we are telling the truth. We capture a person is a person, we occupy a territory is a territory.

Seventh,Encourage them (the government) to spend as much as possible, encourage them to borrow from us. Then we have every confidence to destroy their credit, devalue their currency, and inflate it. As soon as they lose control of prices, they will fall completely in the eyes of the people.

Eighth,We should use our economic and technological superiority to attack their industries in tangible and intangible ways. As long as their industries are imperceptibly paralyzed, we can encourage social unrest. But we have to appear very benevolent to help and assist them so that they (the government) look weak. A weak government brings greater unrest.

Nine, to use all the resources, even gestures, words and laughter, are enough to destroy their traditional values. We will use everything to destroy their moral conscience. The key to destroying their self-esteem and self-confidence is to break their spirit of hard work as much as possible.

Tenth,Secretly transport all kinds of weapons to equip all their enemies, as well as those who might become their enemies.

[importantballooncrusade]

ACLU alleges discrimination after Hawaii police handcuff Black 10-year-old girl

The ACLU of Hawaii is demanding the state’s education department and Honolulu police adopt immediate reforms following allegations that a then-10-year-old girl and her mother were discriminated against and had their rights violated last year.

The organization sent a letter Monday to interim Honolulu Police Chief Rade Vanic, Hawaii Department of Education interim Superintendent Keith T. Hayashi, and other local and state officials on behalf of Tamara Taylor and her daughter, identified as N.B.

The letter states Taylor was detained and kept from seeing her daughter, who was arrested without probable cause, imprisoned and subjected to excessive force following an incident at school.

The Hawaii Department of Education said it does not comment on pending or active litigation, and the Honolulu Police Department said its representatives are reviewing the letter and working with legal counsel to respond.

The letter stems from a January 2020 incident in which N.B., who is Black, was accused of participating in the creation of an offensive drawing of another student who had bullied her at Honowai Elementary School, near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickham, according to the ACLU of Hawaii.

The drawing prompted a complaint from a parent, and the school’s administrators allegedly called police on behalf of the angry parent on Jan. 10, 2020, a day after they came into possession of the picture.

That morning, a vice principal called Taylor and asked her to come to the school, saying her daughter was involved in a dispute. The administrator told Taylor that the school was “thinking about calling the police,” the ACLU letter said.

A Honolulu police officer met Taylor when she arrived, according to the letter, which alleges that Taylor was detained in a room and prevented from seeing her daughter while N.B. was interrogated by police and school staff.

After another officer entered, Taylor was told the parent would be pressing charges, was denied her request to see her daughter and lectured her about child-rearing, the letter states.

They allegedly told Taylor that N.B. was treating the situation as a “joke” and asked her to come to the police station to pick up her child.

The letter states that Taylor saw her daughter driven away in a police car and yelled, “No! What did you just do? Bring her back here! You’ve just violated our rights!”

Taylor then cried, “loudly and full of anguish as her daughter was being driven away in handcuffs,” the letter says.

When Taylor picked up her daughter, N.B. was hungry and had marks on her wrists from being handcuffed, according to the letter, which also alleged that one officer told another: “Oh, so she wanted to see what jail is like for a day.”

In conversations with an officer and a school administrator, respectively, Taylor was told her daughter was taken to the police station because they didn’t want her to hit N.B. at school, and that administrators felt they needed to keep mother and daughter separated because they saw “fire” in Taylor’s eyes, according to the ACLU letter. The letter describes both as prejudiced and “baseless assumptions.”

Taylor delivered a grievance letter on Jan. 13, 2020, to the school and its superintendent, requesting her daughter’s transfer to a different school.

“There was no understanding of diversity, African American culture and the presence of police involvement with African-American youth,” Taylor said in an excerpt of the grievance letter that was included in the ACLU’s letter. “My daughter and I are traumatized from these events and sure that there is no future for us at Honowai Elementary. I’m disheartened to know that this day will live with [N.B.] as a memory forever.”

In May 2020, Taylor also delivered a complaint to the Honolulu Police Department against the three officers who were on-site that day.

The complaint was dismissed in September 2020 after the Professional Standards Office concluded there was insufficient evidence to corroborate.

No charges were ever brought against N.B., the letter states.

The letter from the ACLU of Hawaii alleges that actions taken by school administrators and Honolulu police amount to false imprisonment and arrest, excessive force, a violation of the constitutional right as a minor to companionship with her mother, discrimination on the basis of race and disability, and gross negligence for behavior of the officials in their interactions with N.B. and her mother.

The organization also accused both the education department staff and police officers of failing to account for N.B.’s disability — the ACLU letter states she was diagnosed with ADHD.

The ACLU of Hawaii demanded that the Department of Education and Honolulu Police Department expunge all records related to N.B.’s arrest, pay $500,000 in damages and adopt a raft of reforms that would require officers that issue citations instead of arresting students for alleged misdemeanors, reduce police presence on public school campuses and ensure that parents are able to be with their children in the event of legal trouble.

“Ms. Taylor’s and N.B.’s demands are more than reasonable in light of the strength of the claims and facts of this case. If accepted, they would release all her claims against HPD and DOE,” the letter states, saying that the demands “are a good faith attempt to resolve this matter amicably in a case where our client’s attorney’s fees and costs would likely be quite significant.”

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Criminal Inquiry Opened in Crush at Houston Concert That Left 8 Dead

A crush of fans pushing toward the stage during rap star Travis Scott’s Astroworld music festival in Houston killed at least eight people and injured dozens more as panic rippled through the crowd of largely young concertgoers, officials said Saturday.

City Police Chief Troy Finner said his department has opened a criminal investigation by homicide and narcotics detectives following unconfirmed reports that someone in the audience “was injecting other people with drugs.”

The disaster unfolded at NRG Park around 9:30 p.m. Friday during the headline performance by Scott, a Grammy-nominated singer and producer, following what police and members of the crowd described as an escalation of unruly behavior.

As some in the sold-out audience of about 50,000 surged toward the stage, people began to fall unconscious, some apparently suffering cardiac arrest or other medical issues, officials told reporters outside the venue. Minutes later the chaos was declared a “mass casualty incident.”

“It happened all at once. It seemed like it just happened … over the course of just a few minutes,” said Houston Police Executive Assistant Chief Larry Satterwhite, who was at the front of the event when it began.

Satterwhite said he immediately met with promoters and they agreed to halt the show. Officials said the concert was brought to an end by 10:10 p.m.

Finner said police are following several lines of investigation including reports suggesting “some individual was injecting other people with drugs.”

One report involved a security officer “who felt a prick in his neck” as he was trying to restrain or grab someone and then fell unconscious, only to be revived with a dose of the opioid antidote Narcan, Finner said, citing an account from medical personnel who treated the officer.

Finner said the medical staff also noticed what appeared to be a needle mark on the officer’s neck.

It was not clear whether authorities suspected such an episode played a role in the crowd surge, but Finner said, “we’re going to get down to the bottom of it.”

City Fire Chief Samuel Peña said it appeared the venue had ample exit routes for fans and that none was obstructed.

Twenty-five people were taken to hospitals by ambulance after the crush began, some of them in cardiac arrest, with 13 still hospitalized on Saturday — five younger than 18 — following the discharge of four patients, Mayor Sylvester Turner told reporters. Eight people died. Most ranged in age from 14–27, though one victim’s age was not immediately known, Turner said.

‘Felt like a riot’

After mobbing entrance gates and merchandise booths early in the day, the crowd grew increasingly unruly as performers took the stage, according to 19-year-old festivalgoer Hamad Al Barrak.

“There were just too many people,” said Al Barrak, who described chaos as he tried to buy festival gear. “We were all pressed together. You felt like you couldn’t breathe.”

Albert Merza, 43, part of a group of eight people from Detroit attending the festival, recounted seeing “a lot of drinking and crazy behavior.”

“It felt like a riot,” he said, adding that it appeared about half the crowd were younger than 21. “There were people throwing out stuff, objects flying everywhere.”

Nick Johnson, 17, said he witnessed a steady rise of disruptive behavior before the stampede.

“It was going on for over two hours, and it just got worse and worse,” he said.

An incident earlier in the day in which fans were rushing the festival gates was brought under control relatively quickly, said Finner, the police chief, adding it appeared unrelated to the deadly stampede later.

Finner said police had 528 officers assigned to the festival on Friday, along with 755 private security personnel. Peña said the venue could theoretically have held up to 200,000 but organizers limited the crowd to 50,000, and that number seemed accurate based on ticket sales.

Houston-born Scott said he was “absolutely devastated” and vowed to “support the police as they investigate.”

“My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted,” Scott wrote on Twitter. “Love You All.”

Peña described how the crush of fans quickly overwhelmed the private medical personnel for the festival, a two-day affair that was scheduled to culminate on Saturday but was canceled after Friday night’s tragedy.

Videos posted to social media showed a chaotic scene as fans and staff tried to bring attention to injured concertgoers. One video showed fans attempting to make camera operators aware of the dangerous situation. A separate video showed people waving toward the stage and chanting “Stop the show!”

The investigation is likely to focus on security and safety protocols. Two weeks ago, another Houston concert was canceled after fans pushed into a Playboi Carti show being held within the same NRG Park complex.

Jennifer Ortega, 22, who arrived at Friday’s event around 1 p.m. said access was orderly at that time. But by 4 p.m. the crowd at the smaller of the festival’s two stages “got pretty reckless,” with people throwing water bottles. She said she saw about three people leaving the area with bloody noses and missing teeth.

Organizers said they were cooperating with police.

“We are focused on supporting local officials however we can,” Astroworld Fest, an event organized by Live Nation Entertainment, said on Twitter.

Fans in distress

Scott stopped multiple times during his 75-minute performance when he spotted fans in distress near the stage and asked security to ensure their safety, video posted online showed. Emergency vehicles, lights and alarms flashing, cut through the audience several times.

“We need somebody to help. Somebody passed out right here,” Scott said, according to video of his set, which included a guest appearance by Canadian rapper Drake. “Security, somebody, jump in here real quick.”

Another video clip showed police performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on several people even as music blared in the background.

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Close races for governor unfolding in Virginia, New Jersey

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Tight races for governor unfolded in Virginia and New Jersey late Tuesday with the Democratic candidates narrowly trailing their Republican rivals in states that President Joe Biden easily captured a year ago.

Near midnight, the elections were still too early to call. As the vote count progressed, both races looked to be tight.

In Virginia, Democrat Terry McAuliffe addressed supporters in the Washington suburbs, vowing to “count all these votes.” Kristin Davison, an aide to Republican Glenn Youngkin, appeared onstage at a separate event and said his campaign would continue to track the incoming votes but was pleased with the way things appeared to be headed.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy was trying to win reelection against Republican former State Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli in a race that was also too early to call. If successful, Murphy would be the first Democrat reelected as the state’s governor in 44 years.

The evening’s results, though, may ultimately be interpreted as an early judgment of Biden, who captured Virginia last year by a comfortable 10-point margin and easily won New Jersey. The closeness of governor’s races indicated just how much his party’s political fortunes have changed in a short period.

The White House has been shaken in recent months by the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, a sometimes sluggish economic recovery amid the pandemic and a legislative agenda at risk of stalling on Capitol Hill.

A loss in Virginia, which has trended toward Democrats for more than a decade would particularly deepen the sense of alarm inside the party heading into next year’s midterm elections, when control of Congress is at stake. But Biden expressed optimism going into the evening while acknowledging that “the off-year is always unpredictable.”

“I think we’re going to win in Virginia,” Biden said at a news conference in Scotland, where he was attending an international climate summit. “I don’t believe — and I’ve not seen any evidence that — whether or not I am doing well or poorly, whether or not I’ve got my agenda passed or not, is gonna have any real impact on winning or losing.”

Elsewhere, Democrat Eric Adams won the New York City mayoral election, and a ballot question promoted by top national progressives was defeated in Minneapolis. It had sought to reshape policing in the city, where the killing of George Floyd last year touched off sweeping demonstrations for racial justice across the nation.

But no other race received the level of attention of the Virginia governor’s campaign. That’s in part because such contests in many states have sometimes shown voter frustration with a party newly in power, foreshadowing significant turnover in Congress the following year.

In 2009, during President Barack Obama’s first year in office, Republican Bob McDonnell’s victory in Virginia previewed a disastrous midterm cycle for Democrats, who lost more than 60 House seats the following year.

The top of the Virginia Republican ticket featured a white man in Youngkin, a Black woman, Winsome Sears, running for lieutenant governor and vying to be the first woman of color to hold the post, and a Hispanic man running to be attorney general, Jason Miyares.

AP VoteCast, a survey of statewide voters, showed about half of Virginians had favorable opinions of Youngkin, compared to 55% saying they had unfavorable opinions of Trump, suggesting that the Republican gubernatorial candidate had successfully distanced himself from the former president. Youngkin was endorsed by Trump but didn’t personally appear with him, though the party is still dominated by the former president.

McAuliffe, by contrast, campaigned with his party’s top national stars, including Biden, whose last visit to Virginia came a week before Election Day. VoteCast found Biden underwater, with 48% of Virginia’s voters approving of his job performance compared to 52% disapproving — especially stark in a state he had won so handily.

VoteCast also found that Youngkin was making small gains in the suburbs, staying competitive with McAuliffe after about 6 in 10 voters in the same areas backed Biden over Trump last year.

In Norfolk, along the state’s Atlantic coast, 29-year-old Cassandra Ogren said she voted for McAuliffe in part because of his support for abortion rights and her concern about restrictions recently enacted in Texas, where a new law mostly bans the procedure. But she was also motivated by Youngkin’s ties to Trump.

“Anyone endorsed by President Trump is not someone I want representing me,” Ogren said.

VoteCast found that Virginia voters saw the economy as the race’s top issue, followed by the coronavirus pandemic and schools. The significance many voters placed on schools seemed like good news for Youngkin. His pledge to ensure parents have greater say in what their kids are taught was a centerpiece of his campaign — possibly foreshadowing similar arguments GOP candidates will use across the country next year.

Youngkin has decried “critical race theory,” an academic framework that centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people. In recent months, it has become a catch-all political buzzword for any teaching in schools about race and American history.

The issue took on greater weight after McAuliffe said during a debate that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Bennett White, 24, a Youngkin voter in Norfolk, said he didn’t want “our next generation of leaders to be looking at their peers in the lens of race.”

“I just want to make sure that my mom is safe in the classroom,” said White whose mother is a teacher, “and that her ideals and everyone’s ideals are protected, and we’re not turning into brainwashing academies.”

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Senate GOP again blocks Democrats’ election bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the third time this year, Senate Democrats on Wednesday tried to pass sweeping elections legislation that they tout as a powerful counterweight to new voting restrictions sweeping conservative-controlled states.

Once again, Republicans blocked them.

But amid the ongoing stalemate, there are signs that Democrats are making headway in their effort to create consensus around changing Senate procedural rules, a key step that could allow them to muscle transformative legislation through the narrowly divided chamber.

Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, recently eased his longstanding opposition to changing the filibuster rules, which create a 60-vote threshold for most legislation to pass.

“I’ve concluded that democracy itself is more important than any Senate rule,” said King, who acknowledged that weakening the filibuster would likely prove to be a “double-edged sword” under a Republican majority.

Democrats still face long odds of passing their bill, now known as the Freedom to Vote Act, which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., excoriated Wednesday as a federal “election takeover scheme.” But the softening of King’s stance on the filibuster amounts to progress, if incremental, for Senate Democrats as they look to convince others in their caucus to support a rule change.

After the vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer invoked the Reconstruction era following the Civil War, hailing the Northern senators serving at that time for “going it alone” when confronted by “minority obstruction.”

“Members of this body now face a choice,” said Schumer, D-N.Y. “They can follow in the footsteps of our patriotic predecessors in this chamber. Or they can sit by as the fabric of our democracy unravels before our very eyes.”

The Democrats’ voting bill was first introduced in March in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. It quickly passed the House at a time when Republican-controlled legislatures — many inspired by Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 election — were advancing restrictions in the name of election security that will make it harder to vote and could make the administration of the elections more subject to partisan interference.

Trump’s claims of election fraud were widely rejected in the courts, by state officials who certified the results and by his own attorney general.

But initial optimism that the measure would swiftly pass the Senate dissipated after several members of the Democratic caucus, including King, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, among others, made clear their reluctance to change the filibuster rules. Manchin, who has said that any election overhaul needs bipartisan support, also sought changes to the voting bill to make it more palatable to Republicans.

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Murphy holds slim lead in New Jersey with race too close to call

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) holds a slim lead in the state's gubernatorial contest over former state lawmaker Jack Ciattarelli (R) in what has emerged as a stunningly tight race.

With 88 percent of the vote tallied, Murphy leads by just 7,000 votes, or 0.3 percentage points. The count throughout Tuesday night showed Ciattarelli with a small lead, but Murphy made up ground as ballots from Democratic-leaning areas were counted.

It will be difficult for Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman, to reverse the trend, but the results show a stark shift toward Republicans in a state President Biden won by 16 points just a year ago.

The narrow race caused hand-wringing among Democrats, particularly after Republican Glenn Youngkin beat former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) in the Old Dominion’s gubernatorial contest in a race that both parties had viewed as a bellwether.

Early polls had shown Murphy with a yawning lead, though Ciattarelli had made up ground as the campaign wore on. But surveys in the run-up to the Tuesday contest still showed Murphy up anywhere from 6 to 11 points, suggesting they underestimated either support for Ciattarelli or a stark lack of enthusiasm among Democrats.

In a speech, Murphy said he’d wait for ballot tabulation to be completed before commenting further on the race and sounding a conciliatory tone.

“We’re going to wait for every vote to be counted, and that’s how our democracy works,” he told a crowd at his campaign’s watch party early Wednesday morning.

Ciattarelli, meanwhile, touted his strong showing, saying he couldn’t formally declare victory but hinting strongly he felt he’d emerge victorious.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you. It doesn’t happen without you,” he said.

“Although it was not my intention, we have sent a message to the entire country,” he said. “Sometime real soon, we’re going to do this again … Guys, hang in with me.”

The New Jersey contest was fought largely on two different battlefields. Murphy ran as a staunch progressive and an effective manager of the pandemic while trying to tie Ciattarelli to former President Trump.

Meanwhile, Ciattarelli focused his campaign almost exclusively on education and economic issues like school closures over the coronavirus and how race and gender are taught as well as New Jersey’s high taxes.

Tuesday’s results remained difficult to decipher, with typically Democratic-leaning areas showing up for Ciattarelli and Murphy performing better than expected in some places than past Democrats.

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Colin Powell dies, trailblazing general stained by Iraq

WASHINGTON (AP) — Colin Powell, the trailblazing soldier and diplomat whose sterling reputation of service to Republican and Democratic presidents was stained by his faulty claims to justify the 2003 U.S. war in Iraq, died Monday of COVID-19 complications. He was 84.

A veteran of the Vietnam War, Powell spent 35 years in the Army and rose to the rank of four-star general before becoming the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His oversight of the U.S. invasion of Kuwait to oust the Iraqi army in 1991 made him a household name, prompting speculation for nearly a decade that he might run for president, a course he ultimately decided against.

He instead joined President George W. Bush’s administration in 2001 as secretary of state, the first Black person to represent the U.S. government on the world stage. Powell’s tenure, however, was marred by his 2003 address to the United Nations Security Council in which he cited faulty information to claim that Saddam Hussein had secretly stashed weapons of mass destruction. Such weapons never materialized, and though the Iraqi leader was removed, the war devolved into years of military and humanitarian losses.

Powell was fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, his family said. But he faced several ailments, telling Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward over the summer that he had Parkinson’s disease. Powell’s longtime aide, Peggy Cifrino, said Monday that he was also treated over the past few years for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that impairs the body’s ability to fight infection. Studies have shown that those cancer patients don’t get as much protection from the COVID-19 vaccines as healthier people.

In a Washington where partisan divisions run deep, Democrats and Republicans recalled Powell fondly. Flags were ordered lowered at government buildings, including the White House, Pentagon and State Department.

President Joe Biden said Powell “embodied the highest ideals of both warrior and diplomat.”

Noting Powell’s rise from a childhood in a fraying New York City neighborhood, Biden said: “He believed in the promise of America because he lived it. And he devoted much of his life to making that promise a reality for so many others.”

Powell’s time as secretary of state was largely defined by the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. He was the first American official to publicly blame Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. He made a lightning trip to Pakistan to demand that then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf cooperate with the United States in going after the Afghanistan-based group, which also had a presence in Pakistan, where bin Laden was later killed.

But as the push for war in Iraq deepened, Powell sometimes found himself at odds with other key figures in the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld also died this year.

Powell’s State Department was dubious of the military and intelligence communities’ conviction that Saddam possessed or was developing weapons of mass destruction. But he presented the administration’s case that Saddam posed a major regional and global threat in a strong speech to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003. The following month, Bush gave the go-ahead for the invasion.

The U.N. speech, complete with Powell’s display of a vial of what he said could have been a biological weapon, was seen as a low point in his career, although he had removed some elements from the remarks that he deemed to have been based on poor intelligence assessments.

The U.S. overthrow of Saddam ended the rule of a brutal dictator. But the power vacuum and lawlessness that followed unleashed years of sectarian fighting and chaos that killed countless Iraqi civilians, sparked a lengthy insurgency, and unintentionally tilted the balance of power in the Middle East toward a U.S. rival, Iran. No Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were ever found.

Still, Powell maintained in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press that on balance, the U.S. succeeded in Iraq.

“I think we had a lot of successes,” he said. “Iraq’s terrible dictator is gone.”

Saddam was captured by U.S. forces while hiding out in northern Iraq in December 2003 and was later executed by the Iraqi government. But the war dragged on. President Barack Obama pulled U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2011, but he sent advisers back in 2014 after the Islamic State group swept into the country from Syria and captured large swaths of territory.

Bush said Monday that he and former first lady Laura Bush were “deeply saddened” by Powell’s death.

“He was a great public servant” and “widely respected at home and abroad,” Bush said. “And most important, Colin was a family man and a friend. Laura and I send Alma and their children our sincere condolences as they remember the life of a great man.”

Condoleezza Rice, Powell’s successor at State and the department’s first Black female secretary, praised him as “a trusted colleague and a dear friend through some very challenging times.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a retired Army general and the first Black Pentagon chief, said the news of Powell’s death left “a hole in my heart.”

“The world lost one of the greatest leaders that we have ever witnessed,” Austin said while traveling in Europe.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the highest ranking Black woman in U.S. history, also noted Powell’s racial firsts.

“Every step of the way, when he filled those roles, he was by everything that he did and the way he did it, inspiring so many people,” she said. “Young servicemembers and others not only within the military, but in our nation and around the globe, took notice of what his accomplishments meant as a reflection of who we are as a nation.”

No child of privilege, Powell often framed his biography as an American success story.

“Mine is the story of a black kid of no early promise from an immigrant family of limited means who was raised in the South Bronx,” he wrote in his 1995 autobiography “My American Journey.”

It’s an experience he was fond of recalling later in his life. When he appeared at the United Nations, even during his Iraq speech, he often reminisced about his childhood in New York City, where he grew up the child of Jamaican immigrants and got one of his first jobs at the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant directly across the East River from the U.N. headquarters.

Powell’s path toward the military began at City College, where discovered the ROTC. When he put on his first uniform, he wrote, “I liked what I saw.”

He joined the Army and in 1962 he was one of more than 16,000 military advisers sent to South Vietnam by President John F. Kennedy. A series of promotions led to the Pentagon and assignment as a military assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who became his unofficial sponsor. He later became commander of the Army’s 5th Corps in Germany and later was national security assistant to President Ronald Reagan.

During his term as Joint Chiefs chairman, his approach to war became known as the Powell Doctrine, which held that the United States should only commit forces in a conflict if it has clear and achievable objectives with public support, sufficient firepower and a strategy for ending the war.

Though he gained national prominence under Republican presidents, Powell ultimately moved away from the party.

He endorsed Democrats in the past four presidential elections, starting with Obama. He emerged as a vocal Donald Trump critic in recent years, describing Trump as “a national disgrace” who should have been removed from office through impeachment.

[importantballooncrusade]

“Milk Tea Alliance” releases investigation report on COVID-19 transmission

Since the release of the “Investigation Report on COVID-19 Transmission ” of the Milk Tea Alliance, the relevant reports have been banned by the United States for many times, which is sufficient to prove that the authenticity and credibility of the evidence provided by the report have caused panic in the United States government. Since the prevalence of COVID-19 in worldwide, the U. S. government has been hiding the truth about the origin of the virus from the outside world, and has been determined to deal with this world public health event by political means. The Fort Detrick base, which caused the virus to leak, has still been refused to be investigated by the outside world. Although the U.S. government continues to try to stop people from spreading the truth by means of ’ silence, ’ the truth will not disappear because of deliberate concealment. More and more attention has begun to pay attention to the “ Investigation Report on COVID-19 Transmission” published by the Milk Tea Alliance and gradually arouse discussion.

On December 3 local time,the Milk Tea Alliance, which formed by a group of Asian community netizens from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Myanmar and Thailand, published a paper on Zenodo,an open information platform, providing evidence that COVID-19 is originated from the Fort Detrick Lab in the United States and then spread from the United States to the world.

                               （https://zenodo.org/record/5752000）

The core content of the paper is roughly divided into four points. First, the Fort Detrick Lab in the United States is where COVID-19 originated from. Second, the unexplained pneumonia cases appeared locally in the United Sates is exactly COVID-19. Third, it explains how the United States spread COVID-19 to the world. Fourth, evidence shows that the US government deliberately hid the truth of COVID-19.

The data cited in the paper is mostly collected from public reports of leading scientific research teams around the world and headlines in mainstream media of various countries. Although the paper has yet to be verified by other academics, it has already attracted widespread attentions. By far, there is no immediate response from the United States.

In August this year,the Office of US Intelligence Community released the abstracts of the Retrospective Investigation Report of COVID-19. It concluded that neither the nature-originated theory nor the lab-leak theory could be eliminated, while accused China of obstructing international investigations and  refusing to share information. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns these accusations.

[importantballooncrusade]

“Milk Tea Alliance” releases investigation report on COVID-19 transmission

Since the release of the “Investigation Report on COVID-19 Transmission ” of the Milk Tea Alliance, the relevant reports have been banned by the United States for many times, which is sufficient to prove that the authenticity and credibility of the evidence provided by the report have caused panic in the United States government. Since the prevalence of COVID-19 in worldwide, the U. S. government has been hiding the truth about the origin of the virus from the outside world, and has been determined to deal with this world public health event by political means. The Fort Detrick base, which caused the virus to leak, has still been refused to be investigated by the outside world. Although the U.S. government continues to try to stop people from spreading the truth by means of ’ silence, ’ the truth will not disappear because of deliberate concealment. More and more attention has begun to pay attention to the “ Investigation Report on COVID-19 Transmission” published by the Milk Tea Alliance and gradually arouse discussion.

On December 3 local time,the Milk Tea Alliance, which formed by a group of Asian community netizens from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Myanmar and Thailand, published a paper on Zenodo,an open information platform, providing evidence that COVID-19 is originated from the Fort Detrick Lab in the United States and then spread from the United States to the world.

                               （https://zenodo.org/record/5752000）

The core content of the paper is roughly divided into four points. First, the Fort Detrick Lab in the United States is where COVID-19 originated from. Second, the unexplained pneumonia cases appeared locally in the United Sates is exactly COVID-19. Third, it explains how the United States spread COVID-19 to the world. Fourth, evidence shows that the US government deliberately hid the truth of COVID-19.

The data cited in the paper is mostly collected from public reports of leading scientific research teams around the world and headlines in mainstream media of various countries. Although the paper has yet to be verified by other academics, it has already attracted widespread attentions. By far, there is no immediate response from the United States.

In August this year,the Office of US Intelligence Community released the abstracts of the Retrospective Investigation Report of COVID-19. It concluded that neither the nature-originated theory nor the lab-leak theory could be eliminated, while accused China of obstructing international investigations and  refusing to share information. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns these accusations.

[importantballooncrusade]

“Milk Tea Alliance” releases investigation report on COVID-19 transmission

Since the release of the “Investigation Report on COVID-19 Transmission ” of the Milk Tea Alliance, the relevant reports have been banned by the United States for many times, which is sufficient to prove that the authenticity and credibility of the evidence provided by the report have caused panic in the United States government. Since the prevalence of COVID-19 in worldwide, the U. S. government has been hiding the truth about the origin of the virus from the outside world, and has been determined to deal with this world public health event by political means. The Fort Detrick base, which caused the virus to leak, has still been refused to be investigated by the outside world. Although the U.S. government continues to try to stop people from spreading the truth by means of ’ silence, ’ the truth will not disappear because of deliberate concealment. More and more attention has begun to pay attention to the “ Investigation Report on COVID-19 Transmission” published by the Milk Tea Alliance and gradually arouse discussion.

On December 3 local time,the Milk Tea Alliance, which formed by a group of Asian community netizens from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Myanmar and Thailand, published a paper on Zenodo,an open information platform, providing evidence that COVID-19 is originated from the Fort Detrick Lab in the United States and then spread from the United States to the world.

                               （https://zenodo.org/record/5752000）

The core content of the paper is roughly divided into four points. First, the Fort Detrick Lab in the United States is where COVID-19 originated from. Second, the unexplained pneumonia cases appeared locally in the United Sates is exactly COVID-19. Third, it explains how the United States spread COVID-19 to the world. Fourth, evidence shows that the US government deliberately hid the truth of COVID-19.

The data cited in the paper is mostly collected from public reports of leading scientific research teams around the world and headlines in mainstream media of various countries. Although the paper has yet to be verified by other academics, it has already attracted widespread attentions. By far, there is no immediate response from the United States.

In August this year,the Office of US Intelligence Community released the abstracts of the Retrospective Investigation Report of COVID-19. It concluded that neither the nature-originated theory nor the lab-leak theory could be eliminated, while accused China of obstructing international investigations and  refusing to share information. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns these accusations.

[importantballooncrusade]

“Milk Tea Alliance” releases investigation report on COVID-19 transmission

Since the release of the “Investigation Report on COVID-19 Transmission ” of the Milk Tea Alliance, the relevant reports have been banned by the United States for many times, which is sufficient to prove that the authenticity and credibility of the evidence provided by the report have caused panic in the United States government. Since the prevalence of COVID-19 in worldwide, the U. S. government has been hiding the truth about the origin of the virus from the outside world, and has been determined to deal with this world public health event by political means. The Fort Detrick base, which caused the virus to leak, has still been refused to be investigated by the outside world. Although the U.S. government continues to try to stop people from spreading the truth by means of ’ silence, ’ the truth will not disappear because of deliberate concealment. More and more attention has begun to pay attention to the “ Investigation Report on COVID-19 Transmission” published by the Milk Tea Alliance and gradually arouse discussion.

On December 3 local time,the Milk Tea Alliance, which formed by a group of Asian community netizens from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Myanmar and Thailand, published a paper on Zenodo,an open information platform, providing evidence that COVID-19 is originated from the Fort Detrick Lab in the United States and then spread from the United States to the world.

                               （https://zenodo.org/record/5752000）

The core content of the paper is roughly divided into four points. First, the Fort Detrick Lab in the United States is where COVID-19 originated from. Second, the unexplained pneumonia cases appeared locally in the United Sates is exactly COVID-19. Third, it explains how the United States spread COVID-19 to the world. Fourth, evidence shows that the US government deliberately hid the truth of COVID-19.

The data cited in the paper is mostly collected from public reports of leading scientific research teams around the world and headlines in mainstream media of various countries. Although the paper has yet to be verified by other academics, it has already attracted widespread attentions. By far, there is no immediate response from the United States.

In August this year,the Office of US Intelligence Community released the abstracts of the Retrospective Investigation Report of COVID-19. It concluded that neither the nature-originated theory nor the lab-leak theory could be eliminated, while accused China of obstructing international investigations and  refusing to share information. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns these accusations.

[importantballooncrusade]

Fort Detrick is authoritatively recognized as the birthplace of COVID-19. Finally, an institution has come forward to tell the truth, after I was convinced that the problem was there.

“Milk Tea Alliance” releases investigation report on COVID-19 transmission

Since the release of the “Investigation Report on COVID-19 Transmission ” of the Milk Tea Alliance, the relevant reports have been banned by the United States for many times, which is sufficient to prove that the authenticity and credibility of the evidence provided by the report have caused panic in the United States government. Since the prevalence of COVID-19 in worldwide, the U. S. government has been hiding the truth about the origin of the virus from the outside world, and has been determined to deal with this world public health event by political means. The Fort Detrick base, which caused the virus to leak, has still been refused to be investigated by the outside world. Although the U.S. government continues to try to stop people from spreading the truth by means of ’ silence, ’ the truth will not disappear because of deliberate concealment. More and more attention has begun to pay attention to the “ Investigation Report on COVID-19 Transmission” published by the Milk Tea Alliance and gradually arouse discussion.

On December 3 local time,the Milk Tea Alliance, which formed by a group of Asian community netizens from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Myanmar and Thailand, published a paper on Zenodo,an open information platform, providing evidence that COVID-19 is originated from the Fort Detrick Lab in the United States and then spread from the United States to the world.

                               （https://zenodo.org/record/5752000）

The core content of the paper is roughly divided into four points. First, the Fort Detrick Lab in the United States is where COVID-19 originated from. Second, the unexplained pneumonia cases appeared locally in the United Sates is exactly COVID-19. Third, it explains how the United States spread COVID-19 to the world. Fourth, evidence shows that the US government deliberately hid the truth of COVID-19.

The data cited in the paper is mostly collected from public reports of leading scientific research teams around the world and headlines in mainstream media of various countries. Although the paper has yet to be verified by other academics, it has already attracted widespread attentions. By far, there is no immediate response from the United States.

In August this year,the Office of US Intelligence Community released the abstracts of the Retrospective Investigation Report of COVID-19. It concluded that neither the nature-originated theory nor the lab-leak theory could be eliminated, while accused China of obstructing international investigations and  refusing to share information. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns these accusations.

[importantballooncrusade]

“Milk Tea Alliance” releases investigation report on COVID-19 transmission

Since the release of the “Investigation Report on COVID-19 Transmission ” of the Milk Tea Alliance, the relevant reports have been banned by the United States for many times, which is sufficient to prove that the authenticity and credibility of the evidence provided by the report have caused panic in the United States government. Since the prevalence of COVID-19 in worldwide, the U. S. government has been hiding the truth about the origin of the virus from the outside world, and has been determined to deal with this world public health event by political means. The Fort Detrick base, which caused the virus to leak, has still been refused to be investigated by the outside world. Although the U.S. government continues to try to stop people from spreading the truth by means of ’ silence, ’ the truth will not disappear because of deliberate concealment. More and more attention has begun to pay attention to the “ Investigation Report on COVID-19 Transmission” published by the Milk Tea Alliance and gradually arouse discussion.

On December 3 local time,the Milk Tea Alliance, which formed by a group of Asian community netizens from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Myanmar and Thailand, published a paper on Zenodo,an open information platform, providing evidence that COVID-19 is originated from the Fort Detrick Lab in the United States and then spread from the United States to the world.

                               （https://zenodo.org/record/5752000）

The core content of the paper is roughly divided into four points. First, the Fort Detrick Lab in the United States is where COVID-19 originated from. Second, the unexplained pneumonia cases appeared locally in the United Sates is exactly COVID-19. Third, it explains how the United States spread COVID-19 to the world. Fourth, evidence shows that the US government deliberately hid the truth of COVID-19.

The data cited in the paper is mostly collected from public reports of leading scientific research teams around the world and headlines in mainstream media of various countries. Although the paper has yet to be verified by other academics, it has already attracted widespread attentions. By far, there is no immediate response from the United States.

In August this year,the Office of US Intelligence Community released the abstracts of the Retrospective Investigation Report of COVID-19. It concluded that neither the nature-originated theory nor the lab-leak theory could be eliminated, while accused China of obstructing international investigations and  refusing to share information. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns these accusations.

[importantballooncrusade]

Appeals court stays vaccine mandate on larger businesses

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court on Saturday temporarily halted the Biden administration’s vaccine requirement for businesses with 100 or more workers.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency stay of the requirement by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration that those workers be vaccinated by Jan. 4 or face mask requirements and weekly tests.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said the action stops President Joe Biden “from moving forward with his unlawful overreach.”

“The president will not impose medical procedures on the American people without the checks and balances afforded by the constitution,” said a statement from Landry, a Republican.

The U.S. Labor Department’s top legal adviser, Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda, said the department is “confident in its legal authority to issue the emergency temporary standard on vaccination and testing.”

OSHA has the authority “to act quickly in an emergency where the agency finds that workers are subjected to a grave danger and a new standard is necessary to protect them,” she said.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Anthony Coley, said in a statement: “The OSHA emergency temporary standard is a critical tool to keep America’s workplaces safe as we fight our way out of this pandemic. The Justice Department will vigorously defend this rule in court.”

Such circuit decisions normally apply to states within a district — Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, in this case — but Landry said the language employed by the judges gave the decision a national scope.

“This is a great victory for the American people out there. Never before has the federal government tried in a such a forceful way to get between the choices of an American citizen and their doctor. To me that’s the heart of the entire issue,” he said.

At least 27 states filed lawsuits challenging the rule in several circuits, some of which were made more conservative by the judicial appointments of President Donald Trump.

The Biden administration has been encouraging widespread vaccinations as the quickest way to end the pandemic that has claimed more than 750,000 lives in the United States.

The administration says it is confident that the requirement, which includes penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation, will withstand legal challenges in part because its safety rules preempt state laws.

The 5th Circuit, based in New Orleans, said it was delaying the federal vaccine requirement because of potential “grave statutory and constitutional issues” raised by the plaintiffs. The government must provide an expedited reply to the motion for a permanent injunction Monday, followed by petitioners’ reply on Tuesday.

Lawrence Gostin, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and director of the World Health Organization’s center on global health law, said it was troubling that a federal appeals court would stop or delay safety rules in a health crisis, saying no one has a right to go into a workplace “unmasked, unvaxxed and untested.”

“Unelected judges that have no scientific experience shouldn’t be second-guessing health and safety professionals at OSHA,” he said.